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Then, with a wild and passionate outburst, the boy made a dash at the old man and caught him by the shoulder, as he cried: "Oh, Father Swythe, I do want to learn to read and to write, and be what you said. Please forgive me and help me, and I will try so hard so very, very hard!"
Alfred watched eagerly, and his eyes wandered about the cell-like room devoted to Swythe a very plain and homely place, with a stool or two and a large table beneath the window, while one side was taken up by the simple pallet upon which the monk slept.
If that's laid down here Father Swythe can pull himself out." "Fetch it yourself!" cried Bald angrily. "We're not your serfs." "I'm going to stop with Father Swythe," cried Alfred. "Good boy! good boy!" whispered the monk. "And look here," cried Alfred angrily: "it's cruel and wicked not to help him, and if you don't go I shall tell mother, and father will have you all punished severely."
Encouraged by these words of the monk and the smiles and praises of the Queen, Alfred made rapid progress, which, oddly enough, grew quicker still from the way in which Bald and his brothers ridiculed him and laughed at his attempts, for their gibes angered him, but only made him work the harder, and with results which Swythe told the Queen were wonderful.
"It is not wonderful, and you soon will be able to do it," said Swythe; "but let's say all those words over again letter by letter, and then the words." "They are Latin?" asked the boy. "Yes," said Swythe, "and you are going to learn them so as to know them next time you see them."
"Yes, I'll get you out," cried Alfred, and he waded towards his unfortunate tutor, trampling the reeds down with his bare feet, but sinking in up to his knees at every step. "Mind you don't get into a hole, Fred!" cried Bald. "Mind the big luces!" shouted Bert. "There's a monster lives among those reeds." "Oh, they all swam away when Father Swythe fell in," cried Red.
"Now watch me," said the old man, and Alfred looked closely while Swythe took a duck's quill out of a bunch, cut off the hollow part, and then lightly cut off the end where it had grown from the duck's wing.
There was Swythe sitting at a low table beneath the window with his back to him, singing a portion of a chant whose sweet deep tones seemed to chain the boy to the spot, as he listened with a very pleasurable sensation, and watched the monk busily turning a big flattened pebble stone round and round as if grinding something black upon a square of smoothly-polished slab.
"Wait a moment!" said Swythe, taking up another clean mussel-shell, into which he put a tiny patch of the bright blue dust. "Now you shall see it turn purple."
Old chronicles tell many stories of his deeds stories that have grown old and old and they tell too that the studious boy's teacher Swythe became Bishop of Winchester and was called a saint, while old writers have worked up a legend about the rain christening the apples on Saint Swithin's Day, and when it does, keeping on sprinkling them for forty days more; but, like many other stories, that one is not at all true, as any young reader may find out by watching the weather year by year.
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